Partnership and Tension: The Army and Air Force Between Vietnam
and Desert Shield

HAROLD R. WINTON

The field of classical music, which requires the harmonious blending
of sounds produced by a wide variety of talented artists, has
provided military historians and practitioners a rich trove of
analogies for the description of battles and campaigns. It can,
however, likewise be used to examine the interaction of two armed
services in times of peace. It is thus perhaps fitting to consider
the thoughts of George Szell, renowned conductor of the Cleveland
orchestra, who opined that

the characteristics commonly associated with chamber music can
be achieved in symphonic orchestras far more readily than is customarily
imagined. It is a matter, first, of the excellence of the players
themselves, and second of the manner in which they are trained
to listen to what others are doing and to make their individual
part contribute to the ensemble synthesis.[1]

This article will examine the extent to which Army and Air Force
cooperation on air-ground issues met maestro Szell's standards
in the years between the end of the war in Vietnam and the eve
of Desert Shield.

The heart of the work is a critical, comparative analysis of Army
and Air Force doctrine regarding air-ground operations in the
period 1973-1990. For purposes of the analysis, air-ground operations
are defined as attacks from the air against enemy ground targets
that have either tactical or operational consequence for friendly
ground formations. Such attacks are usually classified under the
rubrics of close air support (CAS) and air interdiction (AI).
The purpose of the analysis is to determine the degrees of commonality
and divergence that marked the two services' approaches to air-ground
operations and the underlying reasons for either the compatibility
or tension between the emerging doctrinal positions. Initial factors
to be examined include the services' visions of the nature of
war, their doctrine development processes, and the roles of key
Army and Air Force personalities in shaping doctrine.

The article is divided into three parts. The first focuses on
the period from 1973 to 1979 when the Army and the Air Force began
a partnership that was based primarily on the Army's realization
of its need for Air Force support to execute its Active Defense
doctrine. The second examines the period from 1980 to 1986, in
which the partnership was strengthened as the Army transitioned
from a doctrine of Active Defense to AirLand Battle and began
to grapple with the concept of the operational level of war. The
final section assesses the years from 1987 to 1990 in light of
the Army's efforts to develop capabilities to conduct deep battle
and the emergence of unofficial thought within the Air Force concerning
the operational level of war.

Forming the Partnership, 1973-1979

The Vietnam experience significantly affected both the Army and
the Air Force, but in noticeably different ways. The Army was
virtually shattered. The proud, confident days when troops had
helicoptered into the Ia Drang Valley and put to flight multiple
NVA regiments were, by 1973, a faded and distant memory. Instead,
at the forefront of the Army's consciousness were a series of
battles that were, at best, tactical stalemates, and a deep malaise
brought about by an unpopular war, an inequitable draft system,
a progressive unraveling of small-unit discipline, and a severe
questioning of the competence and integrity of its senior leaders.
While some placed the onus for the Vietnam debacle on misguided
policy and faulty military strategy directed from the E-ring of
the Pentagon, others realized that if the Army was to provide
effectively for the common defense, it would have to reform itself
both morally and intellectually. The intellectual component of
that transformation was to be centered first in doctrine.

The Air Force experience in Vietnam was not as searing as the
Army's, but it did possess some doctrinal implications. First,
the evidence on air interdiction was mixed. While it had not been
able to alter appreciably the support to guerrilla warfare, it
had demonstrated the ability to disrupt substantially the logistical
flow to conventional offensive operations. Second, seven long
years operating under a badly fragmented command system strongly
reinforced the Air Force's institutional preference for a single
air commander in each theater of operations, operating under the
direct purview of the theater commander. The implications of the
Vietnam experience for the theory of strategic attack to negate
an opponent's military capability and undermine his political
will were less clear. Many Air Force analysts insisted that Linebacker
II demonstrated what airpower could do when the politicians took
the gloves off.[2] More thoughtful analysts, however, pointed
out that there was no specific target set that neutralized the
DRVN military capability and that Nixon's political objective
of disengaging America from Vietnam was purchased with the carrot
of concessions as much as it was imposed with the stick of airpower.[3]
Vietnam provided rather uncertain grist for the Air Force doctrinal
mill.

Army-Air Force communications on doctrinal matters were also influenced
by the differing command echelons at which each service's most
significant doctrine was developed. The Air Force doctrinal structure
envisioned three levels: basic, or fundamental, doctrine, which
is normally written at the Air Staff; operational doctrine, which
is the responsibility of the major subordinate commands; and tactical
doctrine, which is developed by a variety of schools and agencies.[4]
The structure of Army doctrine is similar, but more closely tied
to its level of organization. At the top is capstone doctrine,
which is the rough equivalent of Air Force basic doctrine. Subordinate
doctrine addresses warfighting and support concepts appropriate
to corps, division, brigades, battalions, and ultimately even
minor tactical units.

The major difference between the Army and the Air Force after
1973 was that the Army formed in that year a single organization,
the Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC), which was responsible
for the development of virtually all its doctrine from
the capstone manual to the lowest tactical publication. This gave
the Army a powerful integrating agency that could, and did, make
doctrine the engine that drove the Army. Perhaps doctrinal development
in the Air Force was more diffuse because doctrine was a more
tangential concern in Air Force than in Army life. This diffusion
also created real problems in institutional communication. Both
the Air Force and the Army recognized that the USAF Tactical Air
Command (TAC), to which belonged all the continental US-based
aircraft that flew CAS and interdiction missions, was the logical
point of contact at which TRADOC should interact on doctrinal
matters. But the TAC-TRADOC dialogue was always influenced by
the fact that TAC did not speak for the Air Force--the
Air Staff closely guarded its prerogatives in doctrinal matters.[5]
Given the distinctly divergent institutional arrangements for
doctrinal formulation, it is surprising that one actually finds
a significant amount of cooperation between the two services during
the era between Vietnam and Desert Shield. That story begins with
the development of the Army's "Active Defense" doctrine
published in 1976.

The 1976 edition of Field Manual 100-5 was driven by three
dynamics: the reorientation of the American national security
focus from Indochina to Europe; the increased range, accuracy,
and lethality of direct-fire weapons evident in the 1973 Middle
East War; and the personal energy and determination of TRADOC's
first commander, General William E. DePuy. The situation in Europe
was grim. Army forces there had been bled white to support the
insatiable manpower appetite of the war in Vietnam, and the continuously
modernized Warsaw Pact forces appeared capable of launching a
successful offensive into NATO territory. The 1973 Middle East
War served as a wake-up call for the US Army. Tank and artillery
losses from both sides were greater than the complete inventory
of these systems in US Army, Europe.[6] General DePuy supplied
the energy to apply the lessons that he derived from the Arab-Israeli
War to the fashioning of an American Army that would be tactically
capable of repelling a Warsaw Pact invasion in Europe.[7]

The centerpiece of this transformation was the 1976 edition of
Field Manual 100-5. The second paragraph of the opening
chapter contained the clear imperative, "Today the US Army
must, above all else, prepare to win the first battle of the
next war" (emphasis in original).[8] The entire second
chapter was a discourse on the effects of modern weapons that
graphically depicted their increased range and lethality from
World War II to the 1973 Middle East War.

Of particular interest to the present study was Chapter 8, "Air-Land
Battle," the second paragraph of which explicitly addressed
the Army's dependence upon the Air Force:

Both the Army and the Air Force deliver firepower against the
enemy. Both can kill a tank. Both can collect intelligence, conduct
reconnaissance, provide air defense, move troops and supplies,
and jam radios and radar. But neither the Army nor the Air Force
can fulfill any one of those functions completely by itself. Thus,
the Army cannot win the land battle without the Air Force
[emphasis in original].[9]

This analysis paid particular attention to the suppression of
Warsaw Pact air defenses, asserting, "Whenever and wherever
the heavy use of airpower is needed to win the air-land battle,
the enemy air defenses must be suppressed" (emphasis
in original).[10] This suppression was depicted as a joint effort
that required the integration of the intelligence and strike capabilities
of both services. In short, the Army's 1976 doctrinal prescription
for a future war in Europe clearly recognized that cooperation
with the Air Force was a tactical and institutional imperative.

Air Force basic doctrine in the period 1973-1979 does not reflect
a similar sense of commonality. The 1975 edition of Air Force
Manual 1-1 was a bland document. The manual listed eight combat
operational missions that included strategic attack, counter air,
air interdiction, close air support, aerospace defense of the
United States, aerospace surveillance and reconnaissance, airlift,
and special operations.[11] It also provided the stock definitions
of and commentary on AI and CAS operations. The former were defined
as those "conducted to destroy, neutralize or delay enemy
ground or naval forces before they can be brought to bear against
friendly forces." CAS operations were "intended to provide
responsive, sustained and concentrated firepower of great lethality
and precision . . . in close integration with the fire and maneuver
of surface forces." There was, however, nothing in the 1975
edition of AFM 1-1 to indicate that the conditions under
which AI and CAS were to be executed had recently undergone radical
transformation or that close cooperation with the Army, particularly
in the area of the suppression of enemy air defenses (SEAD), had
become a key element in the Air Force's ability to conduct these
operations without suffering unacceptable losses.

The 1979 edition of AFM 1-1 did little, if anything, to
improve this situation. Now widely derided by airpower cognoscenti,
this manual has been referred to by one informed analyst as representing
"the nadir of Air Force doctrine."[12] The manual appeared
to meet the objective stated by its original drafters three years
earlier to "provide a document that is interesting, relevant,
and useful at all Air Force organizational levels."[13] However,
in attempting to be all things to all people, the manual also
appeared to lose its focus.

Despite the fuzziness of Air Force basic doctrine, there is considerable
evidence to indicate that the Air Force was closely scrutinizing
the realities of a possible war in Europe and was actively cooperating
with the Army to reach mutually acceptable solutions to those
problems. The former was manifested in the decision to develop
a single-mission CAS aircraft and in a series of studies that
examined the details of a possible Warsaw Pact invasion of Western
Europe. The latter was demonstrated in numerous joint ventures
between TAC and TRADOC.

The development of the A-10 ground attack aircraft was the most
tangible and, in many ways, the most significant indicator of
the Air Force's commitment to air-ground operations between Vietnam
and Desert Shield. The key problem was how to kill tanks with
air-delivered munitions. The answer that emerged was an aircraft
designed around a Gatling gun that fired 3000 to 4000 rounds of
armor-piercing ammunition per minute.[14] From the Army's point
of view, production and fielding of the A-10 not only vouchsafed
the Air Force's commitment to the CAS mission, it also created
a corpus of pilots whose whole professional being was centered
around providing that support.

The Air Force's analytical focus began to shift toward the problems
of a European war in the mid-1970s. In late 1975, RAND completed
a study for the Air Force that examined the relative merits of
additional manned aircraft, remotely piloted vehicles, and stand-off
munitions for improving air-ground capability in NATO.[15] In
May 1976, the Air Force sponsored a two-day conference at RAND
to explore in some detail exactly how the Warsaw Pact ground forces
might attack NATO.[16] Among the issues addressed were how the
war might start, principal attack axes, the primacy of the offensive
in Soviet doctrine, Soviet concepts and tactics, logistical support,
air defenses, and chemical warfare capabilities. Other RAND studies
requested by the Air Force included a 1978 analysis of the effects
of weather on battlefield air support in NATO and a 1979 assessment
of the potential vulnerabilities of Warsaw Pact forces to attacks
against their tactical rear areas.[17] The main conclusion one
draws from these analyses is that in the early post-Vietnam years,
the Air Force took its mission to support the Army in a European
war very seriously indeed and engaged in a comprehensive effort
to determine how best to accomplish this mission.

The most obvious institutional arrangement that reflected Army-Air
Force cooperation was the connection between TRADOC and TAC. Initial
meetings between the commands were held in October 1973; on 1
July 1975, they established a joint office known as the Directorate
of Air-Land Forces Application, or ALFA.[18] ALFA's location at
Langley AFB, Virginia, TAC's headquarters and a mere 15-minute
drive from TRADOC's headquarters at Fort Monroe, facilitated communication.

During the period 1975-1979, ALFA successfully resolved many of
the tactical and procedural issues regarding air-ground interface
on a highly lethal battlefield. Airspace management was addressed
in a document issued by TRADOC, TAC, and FORSCOM (US Army Forces
Command) that was successfully tested in the 1976 Reforger (Return
of Forces to Germany) exercise.[19] The agency also produced a
comprehensive volume on the Soviet air defense threat and a study
of this system's vulnerabilities.[20] In September 1977, tests
under ALFA's aegis were conducted at Fort Benning, Georgia, to
evaluate techniques for the combined use of attack helicopters
and A-10 aircraft against enemy ground formations.

At higher levels, however, ALFA was not able to bridge the gap
between Army and Air Force views on air-ground cooperation. The
genesis of the problem was General Creighton Abrams's 1973 decision
to eliminate the field army as an echelon of army organization.[21]
The demobilization of the Army and the elimination of the peacetime
draft at the end of the Vietnam War led to a precipitous reduction
in Army manpower. In order to satisfy Congress with an acceptable
"tooth-to-tail" ratio and stabilize the Army's force
structure, Abrams struck an agreement with Secretary of Defense
James Schlesinger to retain 16 divisions on active duty in return
for a guaranteed force of roughly 785,000. To hold up his end
of the bargain, Abrams had to do two things: first, put a major
portion of the support structure into the reserves; and second,
cut manpower at command levels above the division. Thus, the field
army as an organizational echelon disappeared.

The field army headquarters, however, had been the nexus of air-ground
cooperation in both World War II and Korea. The fundamental precept
that emerged from this relationship was that each field army would
be supported by a collocated Tactical Air Command that worked
for the theater air commander but whose raison d'être
was assisting the supported ground commander in the accomplishment
of his mission. A series of proposals involving the exchange of
liaison elements between the two services culminated in a test
of the concept late in 1977. In January 1978 TRADOC published
its analysis of exercise Blue Flag, which concluded that there
was adequate Air Force representation at the corps level and that
the Army had adequate representation to the Tactical Air Control
Center (TACC).[22] There was, however, an anomaly in this report.
It envisioned individual corps commanders communicating directly
with the air component commander regarding the redistribution
of sorties among the corps, which was clearly not a position the
Air Force relished.[23] The demise of the field army would continue
to bedevil Army and Air Force planners in the years ahead.

In summary, the early post-Vietnam years were marked by a deliberate
effort on the part of the Army and the Air Force to prepare themselves
to defend Western Europe. The Army's effort was driven by the
creation of TRADOC and the conscious use of doctrine as the device
to refashion itself in the wake of the Vietnam trauma. In contrast,
Air Force basic doctrine appeared to lack a unifying vision. Nevertheless,
the Air Force developed an aircraft tailor-made for killing enemy
tanks in Europe and it carefully assayed both the Warsaw Pact
ground forces and the physical environment in which it would have
to operate to help the Army defeat them. Finally, a promising
start at forging cooperation between the two services was embodied
in the TAC-TRADOC partnership. There remained, however, the troubling
issue of restoring the higher-level ground-air interface in the
wake of the Army's decision to eliminate the field army as an
organizational echelon.

Strengthening the Partnership, 1980-1986

Over the next six years, the Army significantly revised its capstone
doctrine from Active Defense to AirLand Battle. The latter term
generated a great deal of misunderstanding, particularly during
the Gulf War. It is important to remember that AirLand Battle
was Army doctrine; it was not Air Force doctrine,
and it was not joint doctrine. Air Force basic doctrine
was rearticulated in 1984, providing a somewhat more coherent
view of the theory and application of airpower than had its predecessors.
Air Force cooperation was absolutely essential to the execution
of the Army's AirLand Battle doctrine. That cooperation was evident
in the development of the "31 Initiatives," which focused
mainly on programmatic activities between the Army and Air Staffs,
and ALFA's publication of several practical biservice manuals.
However, the tension between Army and Air Force perspectives regarding
air-ground integration at the operational level again surfaced,
this time in the extent to which NATO doctrinal prescriptions
for the control of air interdiction would be incorporated into
American Air Force practice.

General DePuy had clearly intended for the 1976 edition of FM
100-5 to be widely read. It was. It was also widely debated.
As the debate matured, criticism of the Active Defense became
focused on several key issues. First, it was too weapon-system
oriented; soldiers were portrayed as mere operators, not warriors.
Second, the defensive method of moving from blocking position
to blocking position seemed to cede the initiative to the adversary.
Third, the emphasis placed on winning the first battle
left open the more important question of winning the last
battle. Additionally, the doctrine's focus at division level and
below omitted the important contribution to be made by the corps,
particularly in disrupting Soviet second-echelon forces. Although
this debate was in part prompted and abetted by outside analysts,
it was largely an internal affair.[24] Army officers read DePuy's
manual closely; and the more they read it, the less they liked
it.[25]

This dissatisfaction in the ranks corresponded with two developments
at the top. On 1 July 1977, General Donn A. Starry replaced General
DePuy as TRADOC commander; and in June 1979 the Army Deputy Chief
of Staff for Operations and Chief of Staff-designate, Lieutenant
General Edward C. Meyer, suggested to Starry that it was time
to begin work on a new FM 100-5.[26] Starry was already
inclined in this direction.[27] Although as commander of the Armor
Center, and a DePuy protégé, he had been one of
the key participants in developing the 1976 edition of FM 100-5,
his perspective began to change when he took command of the V
Corps in Europe.[28] Here he realized the vital importance of
not simply blunting the initial attack, but of engaging Soviet
second-echelon forces as well.[29] After a period of casting around
for a term that would adequately convey the sense of the doctrinal
shift he envisioned, Starry announced his decision to refer to
the Army's approach to warfare as "AirLand Battle."[30]
There are two things noteworthy about this decision. First, although
the doctrine espoused in the 1976 edition of FM 100-5 came
to be known as "Active Defense," that was a derived
name, not a given one. In contrast, Starry deliberately hung a
label on his emerging doctrine. Second, the "Air" part
of AirLand Battle was clearly intended to signal the Air Force
that the Army envisioned a strong partnership between the two
services on any future battlefield.[31]

The 1982 edition of FM 100-5 reflected both Starry's guidance
and the input of a number of mid-grade officers who had found
the previous edition badly wanting.[32] The new manual addressed
virtually all of the concerns raised by the latter. Gone was the
single focus on the first battle. Instead, the manual introduced
the concept of an operational level of war that involved the planning
and conduct of campaigns, defined as "sustained operations
designed to defeat an enemy force in a specified space and time
with simultaneous and sequential battles" (emphasis
added).[33] The new doctrine espoused four "basic tenets"
of initiative, depth, agility, and synchronization (emphasis
in original).[34] The tenet of depth led to the concept of "deep
battle," which was particularly significant for air-ground
operations, for it articulated the Army's realization of the need
to delay or disrupt--to interdict--Soviet second-echelon formations
before they made contact with friendly troops.

In 1986 the Army published a new edition of FM 100-5, which
updated and expanded the concept of AirLand Battle.[35] This edition
contained much more explicit attention to the conduct of campaigns
and major operations. Of particular note for the conduct of air-ground
operations was this statement:

Operational level commanders try to set favorable terms for battle
by synchronized ground, air, and sea maneuver and by striking
the enemy throughout the theater of operations. Large scale ground
maneuver will always require protection from enemy air forces
and sometimes from naval forces. Commanders will therefore conduct
reconnaissance, interdiction, air defense, and special operations
almost continuously. Air interdiction, air and ground reconnaissance
. . . must all be synchronized to support the overall campaign
and its supporting operations on the ground, especially at critical
junctures.[36]

This passage reflected a growing maturity on the part of Army
doctrine writers, for it specifically referred to ground operations
supporting an overall campaign plan. While it established
the need for ground forces to receive air protection and for the
synchronization of interdiction with them, especially at critical
junctures, this doctrinal statement implicitly accepted the proposition
that the critical decisions on how the synchronization would take
place would be made in the context of campaign objectives,
not merely the tactical dictates of individual battles.
This realization brought it much more closely into tune with the
Air Force perspective on the employment of airpower.

That perspective was formally updated in the 1984 edition of AFM
1-1, now titled Basic Aerospace Doctrine of the United
States Air Force.[37] It was divided into four chapters, dealing
with the military instrument of power; the employment of aerospace
forces; missions and specialized tasks; and issues of organization,
training, equipment, and sustainment. The discussion of the coordination
of interdiction activities with surface forces was particularly
apt:

The effect of these attacks is profound when the enemy is engaged
in a highly mobile maneuver scheme of operation dependent on urgent
resupply of combat reserves and consumables. Air and surface commanders
should take actions to force the enemy into this intense form
of combat with a systematic and persistent plan of attack. The
purpose is . . . to generate situations where friendly surface
forces can then take advantage of forecast enemy reactions.[38]

In sum, the Air Force's 1984 statement of its basic doctrine represented
a more coherent explication of airpower principles than its predecessor
and recognized some of the potential for the cooperation of air
and ground forces at the operational level, but stopped short
of a fully developed typology of how this synergism could best
be achieved.

The partnership between Tactical Air Command and TRADOC was strengthened
by a formal understanding at the departmental level "for
enhancement of joint employment of the AirLand Battle Doctrine."[39]
This April 1983 document, signed by the service Chiefs of Staff,
committed the services to use the 1982 edition of FM 100-5
as the basis for seeking increased integration of Army and Air
Force tactical forces, enhancing interservice planning and programming,
continuing the dialogue on doctrinal matters, working together
on deep-attack systems, coordinating airlift requirements, and
resolving issues concerning the integration of AirLand Battle
into theater operations. It was followed in November 1983 by an
understanding signed by the Air Force Chief of Staff, General
Charles A. Gabriel, and the new Army Chief of Staff, General John
A. Wickham. This paper emphasized the planning and programmatic
aspects of the previous memo and pledged the services to "initiate
herewith a joint process to develop in a deliberate manner the
most combat effective, affordable joint forces necessary for airland
combat operations."[40] This agreement committed the services
to exploring 31 specific initiatives regarding air-ground operations
that dealt with issues of air defense, rear area operations, suppression
of enemy air defenses, special operations forces, munitions development,
combat techniques and procedures, and the fusion of combat information.[41]

The "31 Initiatives" achieved mixed success. Within
15 months, action on 18 of them had been completed, including
the Air Force's decision to cancel the development of a "mobile
weapons system" (an ersatz tank) for airbase defense and
a ground-based radar jamming system; concomitant cancellation
of an Army program for an airborne radar jammer; joint development
of a tactical missile system (J-TACMS) and a surveillance target
and attack radar system (J-STARS); and agreement between TAC and
TRADOC regarding procedures for CAS in the rear areas.[42] The
services continued to find it difficult, however, to settle the
issue of air-ground interface at the operational level of war.

The focal point for this obstacle was the divergence of perspectives
over Initiative #21, battlefield air interdiction (BAI). BAI had
a long and checkered past that arose from three issues: first,
the divergence between the Army and the Air Force concerning the
relative authority of various command echelons in directing aircraft
to provide ground support; second, the elimination of the field
army as a ground echelon of command; and third, the influence
of NATO tactical air doctrine on US Air Force doctrine. The Air
Force command philosophy, expressed most recently in the 1984
edition of AFM 1-1 was one of "centralize control-decentralize
execution."[43] Although the doctrine did not spell out the
level of centralization, the Air Force preference was for
control at the theater of operations. This meant, from the Air
Force perspective, that the theater air commander would retain
responsibility for control and direction of the air interdiction
effort, while ground commanders supported by various air formations
would have a voice only in the sub-allocation of CAS sorties to
their subordinate units. As we have seen, however, the structure
of the air-ground interface process was now in a state of disarray
brought about by the disappearance of the field army.

The problem was further complicated by the military command structure
in Allied Command Europe's Central Region, AFCENT, and divergences
between British and American philosophies of air-ground operations.
AFCENT was organized with a theater headquarters, a supporting
air headquarters known as Allied Air Forces Central Europe (AAFCE),
which contained the 2d and 4th Allied Tactical Air Forces (2ATAF
and 4ATAF), and two subordinate land headquarters, Northern Army
Group (NORTHAG) and Central Army Group (CENTAG). Although 2ATAF
and 4ATAF were subordinate to AAFCE, they were also responsible
for providing air support to NORTHAG and CENTAG respectively.
And, although both ATAFs and both Army Groups were truly allied
formations, 2ATAF and NORTHAG were dominated by the British, while
4ATAF and CENTAG were dominated by the Americans. Furthermore,
the British and Americans had distinctly different perspectives
on air-ground operations.[44] Based on philosophy, economics,
and aircraft capabilities, the Royal Air Force preferred to generate
a large number of sorties in small, two-plane formations with
relatively little centralized control. It also preferred relatively
shallow interdiction to deep interdiction. The USAF, on the other
hand, preferred a slightly more "above the fray" approach
that emphasized a fewer number of larger formations under relatively
tight centralized control. And, based on its possession of platforms
that could conduct deep interdiction and its concern for the high
density of air defense weapons arrayed at and immediately behind
the front lines of Soviet forces, it preferred deep to shallow
interdiction.

A compromise was worked out in NATO tactical air doctrine that
provided for both relatively deep air interdiction (AI) and relatively
shallow battlefield air interdiction (BAI).[45] More significantly,
this doctrine also provided that BAI and CAS would be joined together
in a category known as offensive air support (OAS).[46] And, reflecting
the British preference for the nexus of air-ground operations
to be at the Army-Group/ATAF level rather than at the AFCENT/AAFCE
level, OAS sorties were allocated to the ATAF commanders. Furthermore,
because the ATAF had responsibility for supporting an Army Group,
the Army Group commander had significant influence in determining
how the OAS sorties were sub-allocated among the corps under his
command. On the whole, the US Army was quite satisfied with this
arrangement. The OAS = BAI + CAS formulation gave the CENTAG commander
(an American) sufficient influence over air operations to conduct
major land operations under the theater campaign plan. Furthermore,
this arrangement provided subordinate corps commanders access
to an Army commander in the person of the commander, CENTAG, to
whom they could make their case for priority of both BAI
and CAS sorties.[47] The USAF, however, was much more ambivalent
about BAI. While senior American airmen had been obliged by the
constraints of allied diplomacy to accept it as NATO doctrine,
they were reluctant to incorporate into US doctrine any provisions
for ground commanders to influence air interdiction.

A long period of negotiation at the TAC-TRADOC and departmental
levels culminated in a position paper on OAS in May 1981.[48]
In essence, this document constituted formal biservice cognizance
of the NATO doctrine. It also codified the previously agreed
arrangement for an Air Support Operations Center (ASOC) to be
assigned to each corps and it explicitly recognized that, "generally,
only at corps level will sufficient information be available to
determine whether it is possible to engage and counter a threat
with conventional organic firepower or whether it is necessary
to have this organic firepower supplemented by OAS."[49]
In other words, the Army not only persuaded the Air Force to subscribe
to the NATO doctrine on BAI, it also extracted acceptance of the
reality that the ATAF commander's critical decision on the allocation
of his OAS sorties between BAI and CAS would be dependent upon
intelligence developed at the corps level and passed through the
Army Group to the ATAF. There were, however, two problems. First,
the position paper was just that--a statement of position; it
was not doctrine. Second, the signature of the Air Force
Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Operations did not remove
underlying Air Force reservations about giving the Army influence
over any form of interdiction.[50]

In sum, between 1980 and 1986, the Army and the Air Force institutionalized
the partnership that had been formed from 1973 to 1979. This regularization
was centered around the Army's development and refinement of its
AirLand Battle doctrine and was manifested in the series of J-manuals
produced by the TAC/TRADOC relationship and in the "31 Initiatives"
at the department level. The Air Force also developed a more coherent
statement of its basic doctrine. And, although this doctrine did
not take explicit cognizance of the operational level of war articulated
in the 1982 and 1988 editions of FM 100-5, it at least
demonstrated a preliminary vision for how air and ground forces
might cooperate at this level. There remained, however, divergences
of perspective about the air-ground interface that were apparently
resolved by the interdepartmental position paper on Offensive
Air Support, but which continued to boil beneath the surface.

Cross Currents, 1987-1990

As the Army-Air Force partnership continued to mature (1987-1990),
two developments--one in each service--influenced the partnership
in ways that were not immediately apparent. The first was the
Army's development of a detailed doctrine for the corps' conduct
of deep battle; the second was the publication of a National Defense
University thesis entitled The Air Campaign, written by
a then relatively obscure Air Force Colonel named John Warden.

The strength of the Army-Air Force partnership was evident in
the continuation of a number of biservice projects. By December
1987, TRADOC and TAC, operating under the aegis of the 31 Initiatives,
developed a draft summary of requirements for a follow-on to the
A-10 as a CAS aircraft.[51] By 1988 the services had reached agreement
on concepts for joint attack of Soviet helicopters, the alignment
of air liaison officers and forward air controllers with Army
maneuver units, and a follow-on to the J-SEAD manual of 1982.
Further indication of the institutional solidarity was evident
in an article by General Robert D. Russ, who was General Wilbur
L. Creech's successor at TAC, entitled "The Air Force, the
Army, and the Battlefield of the 1990s." Here Russ stated
categorically, "Everything that tactical air does directly
supports Army operations."[52]

In 1987, the Army took another step forward in the maturity of
its deep battle concept with the publication of a handbook describing
the capabilities of existing and developmental deep battle systems.
The handbook outlined an integrated group of Army and Air Force
systems to sense enemy targets, process information about these
targets, communicate the information to appropriate agencies,
and control the Army and Air Force weapons that would be used
to strike them. The Air Force's Precision Location Strike System
(PLSS) and Joint Surveillance Target Acquisition Reporting System
(JSTARS) and the Army's Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) were
particularly important components of this system.[53] The pièce
de résistance of deep battle publications was the 1990
handbook "Corps Deep Operations (ATACMS, Aviation and Intelligence
Support): Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures." This work
was exactly what its title implied, a handy how-to book for use
by corps commanders and their principal planners in sorting out
the difficult coordination issues that would be involved in attacking
second-echelon divisions of a Soviet-style combined arms army.
It was the product of six years of hard thinking that conceptually
represented the practical link between the technology developed
to fight the deep battle and the overarching doctrine of AirLand
Battle.

However, by developing extended-range systems that allowed the
corps commander to fight the deep battle, the Army had raised
the question of how the effects of these systems would be coordinated
with air operations. The immediate focus of this issue was the
placement of and procedures surrounding the fire support coordination
line (FSCL). The FSCL, originally known as the "no-bomb line,"
was developed during World War II as a coordination measure to
reduce, if not eliminate, the chance that aircraft might drop
ordnance on friendly troops. It was defined as a line short
of which the release of air weapons required the prior clearance
of a ground commander, and it applied primarily to aircrews returning
from interdiction and armed reconnaissance missions with unexpended
ordnance who wanted to be able to take advantage of targets of
opportunity without endangering friendly ground forces. The FSCL
was normally placed at the range limit of friendly artillery.
As long as this range was in the neighborhood of 10-15 kilometers
beyond the friendly front lines, this placement did not present
much of a problem, because air strikes within that range would,
perforce, be coordinated with ground forces. However, with the
advent of the multiple-launch rocket system and later ATACMS,
the Army had weapons that could reach out to roughly 30 and 100
kilometers respectively. Additionally, the corps deep attack manual
envisioned Apache helicopter attacks to a depth of 70-100 kilometers
beyond the front lines. These newly developed capabilities placed
the Army and the Air Force at loggerheads. If, on the one hand,
the FSCL was pushed out to the depths of new Army weapons, it
would significantly interfere with Air Force interdiction efforts
and could potentially allow enemy forces to escape attack by friendly
air formations. If, on the other hand, the FSCL was kept relatively
close to the friendly front lines, the corps commander would lose
freedom of action in the employment of his fire support assets
if he was required to coordinate fires beyond the FSCL with the
Air Force prior to execution. This conundrum defied mutually satisfactory
resolution.[54]

Another indicator of the potential fraying of the Army-Air Force
partnership was the 1988 publication of John Warden's The Air
Campaign.[55] This book could be interpreted on two levels.
At its most obvious, the book was an intelligent and imaginative
tract that took the basic logic of operational art--the linkage
of strategic objectives and tactical goals--and applied it to
air warfare. As such, it addressed classic military questions
such as the relationship between offense and defense, the trade-offs
between concentration and economy of force, the employment of
operational reserves, and the use of deception in war--all from
an air perspective. In this sense, there was little revolutionary
about it. In another sense, however, it was an airpower manifesto
in the tradition of Douhet, Mitchell, and de Seversky. Although
carefully qualified, there was a theme of airpower dominance that
ran through the book like a brightly colored thread. Chapter subheads
such as "Single Arms Can Prevail," "War Can be
Won from the Air," and "Command Is True Center of Gravity"
suggested an airpower-centered approach to warfare that had perhaps
not fully matured at the time of publication.

That soon changed. The pivotal question that The Air Campaign
had not addressed was, "If airpower can be a war-winning
instrument, how does it become one?" In the summer
of 1988, Warden conceived of an answer to that question.[56] Picturing
an enemy society as a system, he reasoned that its ability to
generate power depended on five sub-systems which, in decreasing
order of significance, were leadership, organic essentials, infrastructure,
population, and fielded forces.[57] Warden represented these sub-systems
as five concentric rings with leadership in the center and fielded
forces on the circumference. This formulation directly confronted
a central concern of almost all airpower thinkers: what to target.
To Warden the answer was clear: start at the inside and work out.
Had it not been for the pivotal role that Warden played in the
early planning for air operations in the Gulf War, The Air
Campaign and Warden's subsequent musings on targeting philosophies
would not have been of much more than academic interest.[58] Even
at the time, however, it did represent a view in the Air Force
that the application of airpower could, and perhaps even should,
be thought of as being independent of ground operations. To this
extent, it constituted another cross-current in the story of the
Army-Air Force partnership

Conclusions

This article has examined two issues: the areas of convergence
and divergence between Army and Air Force perspectives on air-ground
operations between the end of the Vietnam War and the eve of Desert
Shield and the underlying causes for them. It is clear that there
was a great deal about which the services agreed. They agreed
on the importance of CAS, that it was an Air Force mission, and
that there should be a dedicated CAS platform and, therewith,
a dedicated group of pilots whose sole training focus would be
their ability to execute the CAS mission. They agreed on the importance
of suppressing enemy air defenses, the fact that it was a shared
responsibility, and the detailed procedures required to carry
it out. They agreed on the importance of attacking enemy second-echelon
forces, that Army helicopters and Air Force platforms could work
in close cooperation to accomplish this mission, and the detailed
tactical procedures such cooperation required. They disagreed
over two issues: the amount of influence that senior ground commanders
should have over Air Force interdiction operations, and the mechanisms
for coordinating the effects of fixed-wing air and extended-range
Army systems. At the risk of being somewhat simplistic, one can
conclude that while at the tactical level there was very significant
agreement, at the operational level there was noticeable divergence.

The dynamics behind these similarities and differences of perspective
were the product of the centripetal forces that tended to pull
the Army and the Air Force together and the centrifugal forces
that tended to pull them apart.

The relative cohesion and strength of the Army-Air Force partnership
from 1973 to 1990 can be attributed in rough priority to:

the unifying effect of the NATO defense mission;

the close cooperation of personalities at or near the top
of each service;

a leadership shift in the Air Force that put fighter rather
than bomber pilots in the majority of influential positions; and

the clarity of the Army's vision of how it intended to fight
a future war that tended to pull the Air Force in its wake.

The NATO defense mission gave each service a clear and unifying
mission. The ability to defeat a Warsaw Pact invasion of Western
Europe below the nuclear threshold was, for the period under analysis,
the single most significant criterion of operational effectiveness
for both services. When the Army and the Air Force looked at this
challenge, each realized it needed the other. While it was true
that the Army dependence on the Air Force was greater than vice
versa, it could not be denied that to suppress hostile air defenses,
the Air Force needed Army help. Furthermore, in order to make
manifest its contribution to the national defense, the Air Force
had to demonstrate its ability to destroy Soviet tanks as well
as Soviet MiGs.

The close personal relations established between senior Army and
Air Force leaders were vital to the strength of the partnership,
helping to forge a bond in peace that one hoped would withstand
the rigors of war.[59] These relationships were abetted by a gradual
but distinct change in Air Force leadership. In 1960, bomber pilots
held 77 percent of the top Air Force leadership positions, fighter
pilots, 11 percent; by 1990 these percentages had become 18 and
53 percent respectively.[60] This shift seems to have been driven
at least in part by the more prominent role of fighter pilots
in the Vietnam War and the declining numbers of bombers in the
inventory. While there are complications in the analysis, the
trend is clear; and it is legitimate to suspect that the Air Force
fighter community was slightly more favorably disposed to welcome
the Army's doctrinal advances than was the bomber community.

The final factor pulling the Army and the Air Force together was
the Army's clear vision of how it wanted to fight a future war
and its distinct realization that Air Force support was absolutely
essential for victory. Air Force centrality to the Army's view
of tactics was integral to both the Active Defense and the AirLand
Battle doctrines; the Army's articulation of the operational level
of war in the latter also contained an explicit acknowledgment
of the importance of coordinated air support. In something of
a doctrinal muddle for several years after Vietnam, the Air Force
appeared to follow the Army's lead.

There was, however, also a set of forces that tended to pull the
services in opposite directions. These included:

the operational differences between the media in which they
fight;

the cultural implications these differences engender;

varying institutional structures for doctrinal formulation;
and

the capabilities of emerging technology.

Air and land forces fight in two distinctly dissimilar environments.
The former enjoy the flexibility to focus their effects at different
loci depending on the strategic, operational, and tactical dictates
of the moment, but their presence is relatively transitory. The
latter offer the offsetting advantage of much more permanent effects,
but their flexibility is limited by gravity. These diverging operating
characteristics produce cultural approaches to war that maximize
the inherent strengths of each force, i.e., flexibility and permanence.

Beyond these endemic difficulties of developing common doctrine,
the Army's 1973 decision to create a major subordinate command
dedicated to the formulation and promulgation of doctrine and
the Air Force's choice not to create such a command made
it difficult for the two services to develop common doctrinal
framework. Finally, the technological evolution that extended
the ranges of land-based indirect fire systems and armed helicopters
blurred the line between what had been the relatively exclusive
operational domains of the two services, thus creating new doctrinal
challenges that defied easy solution.

Interestingly, the partnership between the two services appeared
to be independent of two factors that frequently play a role in
interservice relationships: the size of the defense budget and
external pressure for cooperation. The partnership began in the
mid-1970s when the defense budget was falling steadily in the
aftermath of Vietnam, and it continued to prosper throughout the
1980s when the defense budget was robust. It is also clear that
the partnership was not foisted on the services by outside pressure
for greater joint cooperation. The Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization
Act of 1986 was passed well after the TAC-TRADOC dialogue had
matured into a full partnership and after the 31 Initiatives had
been officially formulated. Furthermore the key joint publication,
Doctrine for Joint Operations, which flowed from the Goldwater-Nichols
Act's specific recognition of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff as the promulgator of joint doctrine, was still in draft
form in 1990.[61] The drive for "jointness" therefore
had virtually no effect on the cooperation that was established
between the two services during the period of this study. While
it could be argued that an earlier start on joint doctrine might
have settled the unresolved issues between the Army and the Air
Force prior to 1990, the extent to which joint doctrine can compensate
for a lack of internally generated interservice cooperation remains
to be demonstrated.

From 1973 to 1990, the Army and the Air Force formed a solid partnership
centered around the Army's ability to execute its AirLand Battle
doctrine with Air Force support. The strength of this partnership
was evident in extensive biservice training, doctrinal publications,
and programmatic cooperation. There was, however, an underlying
tension that can be primarily attributed to diverging perspectives
between the two services about the modalities of air-ground cooperation
at the operational level of war. Had war broken out in Western
Europe, it is arguable that the strengths of the partnership would
have been much more apparent than its weaknesses. The tension
in the partnership nevertheless became rather more apparent in
the weeks and months after Saddam Hussein's tanks rolled into
Kuwait, triggering the American-led coalition's responses of Desert
Shield and Desert Storm. In this theater, the Army-Air Force partnership
was severely strained; and the performance resembled neither a
delicately balanced chamber session nor a finely tuned symphony,
but a concerto in which each performer believed he was playing
the featured instrument. Here, the mutual listening skills were
exiguous, and the interaction between the two services at times
resembled a dialogue of the deaf.[62] But that is another story.

NOTES

This is an abbreviated version of a study that will appear in
a forthcoming anthology of airpower analyses prepared by the School
of Advanced Airpower Studies, Air University. The author wishes
to thank Andrew Bacevich, Dennis Drew, Douglas Johnson, Thomas
Keaney, Phillip Meilinger, David Mets, and John Romjue for their
substantive and useful comments on an early draft of the effort.
All matters of fact and interpretation herein remain, however,
the author's responsibility. They do not reflect the position
of either the Air University or the Department of the Air Force.

1. Robert C. Marsh, "The Cleveland Orchestra: One Hundred
Men and a Perfectionist," High Fidelity, 11 (February
1961), 38.

2. General William Momyer, who commanded the 7th Air Force in
Vietnam, is explicit here. "It was apparent that airpower
was the decisive factor leading to the peace agreement of 15 January
1973." William M. Momyer, Airpower in Three Wars (WW II,
Korea, Vietnam) (Washington: Air Force History Office, 1978),
p. 243.

4. Air Force Manual 1-1: Basic Aerospace Doctrine of the United
States Air Force (Washington: Department of the Air Force,
1984), pp. v-vi.

5. The TAC problem was exacerbated by the fact that it did not
even speak for the entire tactical air community in the Air Force.
United States Air Forces Europe (USAFE) and Pacific Air Forces
(PACAF), like TAC, were four-star commands with their own perspectives
on air-ground operations issues.

7. Additional details on DePuy's personal and TRADOC's institutional
role in driving the lessons of the 1973 Middle East War into the
Army's psyche are found in the TRADOC Report of Major Activities,
FY 1974, 1 August 1975, pp. 14-19; TRADOC Report of Major Activities,
FY 1975, 20 September 1976, pp. 1-10; and William E. DePuy, "Implications
of the Middle East War on U.S. Army Tactics, Doctrine, and Systems,"
in Richard M. Swain, comp., Selected Papers of General William
E DePuy (Fort Leavenworth, Kans.: Combat Studies Institute,
1994), pp. 75-111.

16. J. H. Hayes, H. A. Einstein, and M. Weiner, "How the
Soviet Ground Forces Would Fight a European War: Proceedings of
a Workshop Held at the RAND Corporation, 19-20 May 1976 (U)"
(Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, 1977). (S) Information taken from
this document is unclassified.

24. One of the earliest external critiques was William S. Lind,
"FM 100-5, Operations: Some Doctrinal Questions for the United
States Army," Military Review, 57 (March 1977), 54-65.

25. For a hard-hitting critique of the Active Defense, see Gregory
Fontenot and Matthew D. Roberts, "Plugging Holes and Mending
Fences," Infantry, 68 (May-June 1978), 32-36. Robert
S. Doughty and L. D. Holder, "Images of the Future Battlefield,"
Military Review, 58 (January 1978), 56-69, contains a more
scholarly and muted criticism that saw the "new tactics"
as an intermediate step in a longer process. See also John M.
Oseth, "FM 100-5 (Operations) Revisited: A Need for Better
Foundation Concepts? Military Review, 60 (March 1980),
13-19. For additional details, see John L. Romjue, From Active
Defense to AirLand Battle: The Development of Army Doctrine, 1973-1982
(Fort Monroe, Va.: US Army Training and Doctrine Command, 1984),
pp. 13-21. The criticism of the Active Defense doctrine is also
perceptively assessed in Richard M. Swain, "Filling the Void:
The Operational Art and the U.S. Army," a paper presented
at the Kingston RMC Military History Symposium, 23-24 March 1995,
pp. 15-22.

26. Romjue, Active Defense to AirLand Battle, p. 30.

27. In an address to the Tactics/InterUniversity Seminar Symposium
at Fort Leavenworth on 30 March 1978, Starry defended the rationale
behind the Active Defense, but admitted that improvements could
be made in the doctrine and that the emerging dialogue on the
subject was useful. Donn A. Starry, "A Tactical Evolution--FM
100-5," Military Review, 58 (August 1978), 2-11.

28. The subtleties of the DePuy-Starry relationship during development
of the Active Defense doctrine are explored in Herbert, Deciding
What Has to Be Done, pp. 81-83.

29. Starry's subsequent recollection of this experience: "The
fact that we needed to fight the deep battle, not just with firepower,
but by going deep with maneuver forces as well, starting with
attack helicopters, followed by ground maneuver forces, much on
the order that the Israelis did on the Golan Heights in October
1973, highlighted the deep surveillance-deep fires and command
and control needs." John L. Romjue interview with Starry,
19 March 1993, THO. One of the interesting aspects of this revelation
is how Starry's perception of the lessons of the Middle East War
differed from DePuy's. To Starry it demonstrated the need to maneuver
deep; to DePuy it indicated the need to blunt the breakthrough
attack.

30. TRADOC Commander message, 29 January 1981, Subject: The Air
Land Battle, THO.

31. Starry confirmed that the term AirLand Battle had its roots
in the extensive discussions that had taken place between TAC
and TRADOC since 1973. Author's interview with General Donn A.
Starry (USA, Ret.), 13 May 1995. Starry also told his doctrine
writers that getting the Air Force on board was absolutely necessary
to make the doctrine work. Author's interview with Brigadier General
Huba Wass de Czege (USA, Ret.), 16 February 1995.

32. One of the interpretive issues here is the extent to which
AirLand Battle represented a logical extension of Active Defense
and the extent to which it represented an overthrow thereof. Starry's
position is the former, i.e. AirLand Battle = Active Defense +
Deep Battle. Starry interview, 13 May 1995. One of the two principal
authors of the 1982 edition of FM 100-5 saw AirLand Battle
and Active Defense doctrines as being almost antithetical. Wass
de Czege interview, 16 February 1995.

35. Field Manual 100-5: Operations (Washington: Department
of the Army, 1986), p. I. Wass de Czege, who also worked the second
draft of this edition, maintained that the first several years
of teaching in the School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort
Leavenworth, for which he served as the first Director, were essential
to expanding the treatment of the operational level of war. Wass
de Czege interview, 16 February 1995.

36. Field Manual 100-5, 1986, p. 28.

37. Air Force Manual 1-1: Basic Aerospace Doctrine of the United
States Air Force (Washington: Department of the Air Force,
1984).

40. Army/Air Force "MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING ON INITIATION
OF A JOINT US ARMY - US AIR FORCE FORCE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS,"
2 November 1983, reprinted in Davis, p. 93.

41. These categories of initiatives were established by Davis
for purposes of historical analysis; the MOA merely listed the
initiatives themselves. See Davis, pp. 47-64.

42. Ibid., pp. 71-79.

43. AFM 1-1, 1984, p. 2-20.

44. What follows is based on Steven L. Canby, "Tactical Air
Power in Armored Warfare: The Divergence within NATO," Air
University Review, 30 (May-June 1979), 2-20.

45. This doctrine was codified in the NATO Allied Tactical
Publication 27 (B),Offensive Air Support.

46. Stephen T. Rippe, "An Army and Air Force Issue: Principles
and Procedures for AirLand Warfare," Air University Review,
37 (May-June 1986), 63.

47. The lack of such influence over shallow interdiction was a
major point of contention for the US VII Corps in the Gulf War.

48. Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans and Air
Force Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Operations Memorandum,
Subject: USA and USAF Agreement on Apportionment and Allocation
of Offensive Air Support (OAS)--INFORMATION MEMORANDUM, 23 May
1981, THO.

49. USA AND USAF POSITION ON APPORTIONMENT/ALLOCATION OF OAS,
attachment 2 to ibid., par. 6d.

50. These reservations were reflected in the AF/XO history of
the period: "Following the Field Review, AF/XOXID forwarded
much of the background data on the OAS Agreement to TAC and USAFE
[United States Air Forces, Europe] in an effort to defend the
issue. However, it is obvious that opinions continue to differ
and that discussions on this subject will continue in the coming
months." AF/XO Director of Plans History, 1 July - 31 December
1981, p. 90. USAFHRA File No. K143.01.

52. Robert T. Russ, "The Air Force, the Army, and the Battlefield
of the 1990s," Defense 88, August 1988, p. 13. Russ's
statement was quite controversial within some circles of the Air
Staff because it seemed to preclude the use of tactical air assets
for strategic attack.

54. The 1988 TRADOC annual history mentions an agreement signed
that year by the service chiefs that established notification
and coordination procedures for Army fires beyond the FSCL. TRADOC
AHR, 1 January to 31 December 1988, June 1989, p. 35, THO. However,
as in the case of the BAI agreement signed by the service OPSDEPS,
the provisions of this agreement were not incorporated into doctrine.

55. John A. Warden, The Air Campaign: Planning for Combat
(Washington: National Defense Univ. Press, 1988).

56. The summer of 1988 time-frame is from the author's interview
with Colonel John Warden, USAF, 6 June 1995. In this interview,
Warden explicitly stated that his purpose was to create a new
vision of airpower that would supplant the Creech/Russ view that
airpower's primary function was to support the Army.

57. The fully developed concept can be found in John A. Warden,
"The Enemy as a System," Airpower Journal, 9
(Spring 1995), 40-55.

58. The role that Warden's ideas played in shaping the American
military response to Iraq's August 1990 invasion of Kuwait is
beyond the scope of this study. One version of that story is dramatically
outlined in Richard T. Reynolds, Heart of the Storm: The Genesis
of the Air Campaign against Iraq (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air Univ.
Press, 1995).

59. Starry was emphatic on this point. He stated categorically,
"We would not have had AirLand Battle had it not been for
him [Bill Creech]. I could not have carried it off by myself."
Author's interview with Starry, 13 May 1995.

60. These figures and those that follow are taken from a thesis
by James M. Ford, "Air Force Culture and Conventional Strategic
Airpower" (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: School of Advanced Airpower
Studies, 1992), p. 60.

61. The JCS issued Joint Publication 3-0 as a test publication
on 10 January 1990. TRADOC AHR 1 January to 31 December 1990,
June 1991, p. 55, THO. The manual was not published in final form
until 1994.

62. The literature of the Gulf War is replete with instances of
ineffective communication between the Army and the Air Force.
See, inter alia, Rick Atkinson, Crusade: The Untold Story of
the Persian Gulf War (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1993), pp.
151-52, 218-23, 338-40; Robert H. Scales, Certain Victory:
United States Army in the Gulf War (Washington: Office of
the Chief of Staff, United States Army, 1993), pp. 174-81, 315-16;
Richard M. Swain, "Lucky War:" Third Army in Desert
Storm (Fort Leavenworth, Kans.: US Army Command and General
Staff College Press, 1994), pp. 181-90; Michael R. Gordon and
Bernard E. Trainor, The General's War: The Inside Story of
the Conflict in the Gulf (Boston: Little, Brown, 1995), pp.
203-04, 324-48, 447-54, 494; and Barry D. Watts's perceptive review
essay of Gordon and Trainor's work, "Friction in the Gulf
War," Naval War College Review, 48 (Autumn 1995),
105. A dissenting view is that of Edward Mann, who contends that
"the air campaign plan would eventually meld perfectly with
schemes of surface maneuver to be developed later." Edward
C. Mann, Thunder and Lightning: Desert Storm and the Airpower
Debates (Maxwell AFB, Ala.: Air Univ. Press, 1995), p. 175.

Dr. Harold R. Winton is Professor of Military History and Theory,
School of Advanced Airpower Studies, Air University, Maxwell Air
Force Base, Ala. He holds a Ph.D. in modern European history from
Stanford University. A retired Army officer, he served two combat
tours in Vietnam and commanded a mechanized infantry battalion
in Germany. He also served in the Department of History, USMA,
and was a founding faculty member of the School of Advanced Military
Studies, US Army Command and General Staff College.